HR: 0830h
AN: ED11B-0110    [PDF]
TI: Digital Underground (Shh. It's really Applied Geophysics!)
AU: * McAdoo, B G
EM: brmcadoo@vassar.edu
AF: Vassar College, 124 Raymond Ave. Box 735, Poughkeepsie, NY 12604 United States
AB: Digital Underground (Geology/Physics 241) at Vassar College is an applied geophysics course designed for a liberal arts curriculum, and has nothing to do with Shock G and Tupac Shakur. Applied geophysics courses have a history of using geophysical methods on environmental contamination-type applications (underground storage tanks, leach fields, etc.). Inspired in large part by the Keck Geology Consortium project run by Franklin and Marshall College geophysicist (Robert Sternberg) and archaeologist (James Delle) in an old slave village in Jamaica in 1999, this class examines the history of slavery in New York's Hudson Valley region by way of its forgotten African-American graveyards. This multidisciplinary approach to an issue draws students from across the curriculum- we have had our compliments of geologists and physicists, along with students from sociology, environmental studies, history, and Africana studies. The name of the class and content are designed to attract a non-traditional student of geophysics.- The project-based nature of the class appeals to student yearning for an out-of-classroom experience. The uncontrolled nature of the class demonstrates the complications that occur in real-word situations. The class has in the past broken itself into two teams- a surveying team and an archival research team. Archival research is done (usually by the social scientists in the class) to add a human dimension to the geophysical. The surveying equipment used in delineating these forgotten graveyards includes a Total Station surveyor, an electrical resistivity meter, a magnetometer, and a ground penetrating radar. All students must have a rudimentary understanding of the physics behind the equipment (to the level of where they can explain it to the general public), and the methods used by those studying the archives. This is a project-based class, where the instructor acts as a project manager, and the students make the decisions regarding the survey itself. Every year we undertake a different site- the first year we surveyed a Huguenot era (late 17th -early 18th century) family plot where slaves were rumored to have been buried, then the 19th-20th century Ulster County (NY) Poorhouse "potter's field" where we found evidence of over 2,000 unmarked graves (some underneath the County pool complex!), and this year we are surveying The Dutchess County (NY) Poorhouse burial grounds. The final exam is a public presentation (either to government legislatures or local historical societies). The public presentation is an extraordinary aspect of the course as the students come to realize that they are the experts on this particular site and this suite of tools. The confidence gained by a 3rd year sociology student explaining a cesium-vapor magnetometer to a government official is indescribable.
UR: http://faculty.vassar.edu/brmcadoo/digitalunderground.html
DE: 0994 Instruments and techniques
DE: 0999 General or miscellaneous
DE: 6605 Education
SC: Education and Human Resources [ED]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting